How Mehiläinen is building their feedback culture with Teamspective

Interview with Josetta Lehtonen

by Jaakko Kaikuluoma, co-founder and CEO of Teamspective

Thank you Josetta for taking the time to talk with me. Let's start from the beginning. What was your situation before we met?

Our team grew rapidly in 2020, while the coronavirus boosted demand for digital health services. We were looking for a structured way to measure team wellbeing at scale, and to do it more frequently than earlier. Our team leaders are extremely interested in the wellbeing of their people.

We had thought about building our own wellbeing pulse solution but we decided to use an existing tool instead, and now we're happy about the decision.

How did you come across Teamspective and what caught your interest?

My friend Aliisa Holkko, from Silo AI, had just started to use Teamspective, and told me about it.

I had also been thinking about improving our personal feedback process. So I got very excited when I learned that Teamspective could solve both our needs – improving personal feedback and getting a wellbeing pulse questionnaire!

What else made you choose to work with Teamspective and what was your plan?

Teamspective's feature set and product roadmap were pretty much a perfect fit for our needs. We also really bought into Teamspective's mission, and we wanted to work with a passionate startup who listens to us and genuinely wants to understand our needs.

First, we wanted to implement a pulse questionnaire that helps our teams talk about wellbeing, even when working remotely. Then, we wanted to encourage people to give each other praise, and finally, activating people more with also redirecting feedback. We’re now happily at step 2 and moving to 3.

How would you describe our collaboration? What three adjectives would you use to describe it?

It has been great! The solution works well for us, and the pulse results are continuously checked and talked about, just as we hoped in the beginning.

It has also been joyful to see how our suggestions have been implemented to the app. You’ve been really exemplary in receiving feedback from us!

Hmmm... My three adjectives are

• Kind-hearted – it's so nice that you're always willing to listen to and help us
• Enlightening – serving the broader contexts around culture, productivity and teamwork, and sparring with us about them
• Flexible – you're super fast to react and develop the solution further

What kind of results have you achieved so far?

We can be more proactive because of Teamspective.

Teamspective lowers people's threshold to talk about stress and other factors in wellbeing. Just having this tool helps us put more focus on how to improve things, and the pulse results show us what to talk about. It doesn’t have to be so dramatic to talk about problems at work! Normalizing this kind of conversation helps our people do something before problems escalate.

Our team leaders and project managers have, for instance, talked about the increasing workload and then made changes in how work is organized. This was the main objective for us – to have better insights and to be able to react faster.

Teamspective keeps the topic of wellbeing in team discussion and kind of marks it safe to talk about workload and clarity of goals and targets, for instance.

The system runs pretty much automatically, with little to none admin work. Our managers have seen its value and they're checking and talking about the findings independently.

Who or what kind of companies do you think should try Teamspective?

Those companies who really prioritize wellbeing and long-term coping. There should be a genuine interest to care for your people. We see Teamspective as a part of our pre-emptive wellbeing process.

Also, being interested in improving feedback skills and feedback culture is a must. If feedback feels difficult, Teamspective can make things a lot easier. It’s easy to implement and to use.

Anything else you'd like to add?

When I'm having a bad day, or I have some not-my-favorite tasks, I sometimes go to Teamspective to read some of the reinforcing feedback I have received. I get a boost of joy and energy when I remember that exactly those unpleasant tasks make someone else's life easier. When you know your work is valuable, even the most unpleasant tasks pretty much handle themselves. Could you send some automatic reminders about earlier reinforcing feedback?

"That's a wonderful idea, we're definitely going to look into it!", Jaakko says.